Wuffles started to bounce up and down, yelping with excitement.
Rincewind screamed a hoarse, untranslatable yell of fury, bounced off the wall, snatched up a fallen rock as a crude club, kicked forward and stopped dead.
The Librarian was crouched in the centre of the floor with the shears touching-but not yet cutting-the hat.
And he was grinning at Rincewind.
They stood like a frozen tableau for some seconds. Then the ape dropped the shears, flicked several imaginary flecks of dust off the hat, straightened the point, and placed it on Rincewind’s head.
A few shocked moments after this Rincewind realised that he was holding up, at arm’s length, a very large and extremely heavy rock. He managed to force it away on one side before it recovered from the shock and remembered to fall on him.
‘I see,’ he said, sinking back against the wall and rubbing his elbows. And all that’s supposed to tell me something, is it? A moral lesson, let Rincewind confront his true self, let him work out what he’s really prepared to fight for. Eh? Well, it was a very cheap trick. And I’ve news for you. If you think it worked-’ he snatched the hat brim - ‘if you think it worked. If you think I’ve. You’ve got another thought. Listen, it’s. If you think.’
His voice stuttered into silence. Then he shrugged.
‘All right. But when you get down to it, what can I actually do?’
The Librarian replied with an expansive gesture that indicated, as clearly as if he had said ‘oook’, that Rincewind was a wizard with a hat, a library of magical books and a tower. This could be regarded as everything a magical practitioner could need. An ape, a small terrier with halitosis and a lizard in a jar were optional extras.
Rincewind felt a slight pressure on his foot. Wuffles, who was extremely slow on the uptake, had fastened his toothless gums on the toe of Rincewind’s boot and was giving it a vicious suck.
He picked the little dog up by the scruff of its neck and the bristly stub that, for the want of a better word, it called its tail, and gently lifted it sideways.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You’d better tell me what’s been happening here.’
From the Carrack Mountains, overlooking the vast cold Sto Plain in the middle of which Ankh-Morpork sprawled like a bag of dropped groceries, the view was particularly impressive. Mishits and ricochets from the magical battle were expanding outwards and upwards, in a bowl-shaped cloud of curdled air at the heart of which strange lights flashed and sparkled.
The roads leading away from it were packed with refugees, and every inn and wayside tavern was crowded out. Or nearly every one.
No-one seemed to want to stop at the rather pleasant little pub nestling among trees just off the road to Quirm. It wasn’t that they were frightened to go inside, it was just that, for the moment, they weren’t being allowed to notice it.
There was a disturbance in the air about half a mile away and three figures dropped out of nowhere into a thicket of lavender.
They lay supine in the sunshine among the broken, fragrant branches, until their sanity came back. Then Creosote said, ‘Where are we, do you suppose?’
‘It smells like someone’s underwear drawer,’ said Conina.
‘Not mine,’ said Nijel, firmly.
He eased himself up gently and added, ‘Has anyone seen the lamp?’
‘Forget it. It’s probably been sold to build a wine-bar,’ said Conina.
Nijel scrabbled around among the lavender stems until his hands found something small and metallic.
‘Got it!’ he declared.
‘Don’t rub it!’ said the other two, in harmony. They were too late anyway, but that didn’t much matter, because all that happened when Nijel gave it a cautious buff was the appearance of some small smoking red letters in mid-air.
‘ ‘Hi”,’ Nijel read aloud. ‘ “Do not put down the lamp, because your custom is important to us. Please leave a wish after the tone and, very shortly, it will be our command. In the meantime, have a nice eternity.” ‘ He added, ‘You know, I think he’s a bit over-committed.’
Conina said nothing. She was staring out across the plains to the broiling storm of magic. Occasionally some of it would detach and soar away to some distant tower. She shivered, despite the growing heat of the day.
‘We ought to get down there as soon as possible,’ she said. ‘It’s very important.’
‘Why?’ said Creosote. One glass of wine hadn’t really restored him to his former easygoing nature.
Conina opened her mouth, and - quite unusually for her - shut it again. There was no way to explain that every gene in her body was dragging her onwards, telling her that she should get involved; visions of swords and spiky balls on chains kept invading the hairdressing salons of her consciousness.